intimated--"
"Oh, but when we talked about going to New York, I thought there was nothing for you in Atlanta and, besides, it wasn't my place to say anything. It's a wife's duty to go where her husband goes. But now that Scarlett needs us so and has a position that only you can fill we can go home! Home!" Her voice was rapturous as she squeezed Scarlett. "And I'll see Five Points again and Peachtree road and--and--Oh, how I've missed them all! And maybe we could have a little home of our own! I wouldn't care how little and tacky it was but--a home of our own!"
Her eyes blazed with enthusiasm and happiness and the two stared at her, Ashley with a
queer stunned look, Scarlett with surprise mingled with shame. It had never occurred to her that Melanie missed Atlanta so much and longed to be back, longed for a home of her own. She had seemed so contented at Tara it came to Scarlett as a shock that she was homesick.
"Oh Scarlett, how good of you to plan all this for us! You knew how I longed for home!"
As usual when confronted by Melanie's habit of attributing worthy motives where no
worth existed, Scarlett was ashamed and irritated, and suddenly she could not meet either Ashley's or Melanie's eyes.
"We could get a little house of our own. Do you realize that we've been married five years and never had a home?"
"You can stay with us at Aunt Pitty's. That's your home," mumbled Scarlett, toying with a pillow and keeping her eyes down to hide dawning triumph in them as she felt the tide turning her way.
"No, but thank you just the same, darling. That would crowd us so. We'll get a house--Oh, Ashley, do say Yes!"
"Scarlett," said Ashley and his voice was toneless, "look at me."
Startled, she looked up and met gray eyes that were bitter and full of tired futility.
"Scarlett, I will come to Atlanta… I cannot fight you both."
He turned and walked out of the room. Some of the triumph in her heart was dulled by a
nagging fear. The look in his eyes when he spoke had been the same as when he said he would be lost forever if he came to Atlanta.
After Suellen and Will married and Carreen went off to Charleston to the convent,
Ashley, Melanie and Beau came to Atlanta, bringing Dilcey with them to cook and nurse. Prissy and Pork were left at Tara until such a time as Will could get other darkies to help him in the fields and then they, too, would come to town.
The little brick house that Ashley took for his family was on Ivy Street directly behind
Aunt Pitty's house and the two back yards ran together, divided only by a ragged overgrown privet hedge. Melanie had chosen it especially for this reason. She said, on the first morning of her return to Atlanta as she laughed and cried and embraced Scarlett and Aunt Pitty, she had been separated from her loved ones for so long that she could never be close enough to them again.
The house had originally been two stories high but the upper floor had been destroyed by
shells during the siege and the owner, returning after the surrender, had lacked the money to replace it. He had contented himself with putting a flat roof on the remaining first floor which gave the building the squat, disproportionate look of a child's playhouse built of shoe boxes. The house was high from the ground, built over a large cellar, and the long sweeping flight of stairs which reached it made it look slightly ridiculous. But the flat, squashed look of the place was partly redeemed by the two fine old oaks which shaded it and a dusty-leaved magnolia, splotched with white blossoms, standing beside the front steps. The lawn was wide and green with thick clover and bordering it was a straggling, unkempt privet hedge, interlaced with sweet-smelling honeysuckle vines. Here and there in the grass, roses threw out sprangles from crushed old stems and pink and white crêpe myrtle bloomed as valiantly as if war had not passed over their heads and Yankee horses gnawed their boughs.
Scarlett thought it quite the ugliest dwelling she had ever seen but, to Melanie, Twelve
Oaks in all its grandeur had not been more beautiful. It was home and she and Ashley and Beau were at last together under their own roof.
India Wilkes came back from Macon, where she and Honey had lived since 1864, and
took up her residence with her brother, crowding the occupants of the little house. But Ashley and Melanie welcomed her. Times had changed, money was scarce, but nothing had altered the rule of Southern life that families always made room gladly for indigent or unmarried female relatives.
Honey had married and, so India said, married beneath her, a coarse Westerner from
Mississippi who had settled in Macon. He had a red face and a loud voice and jolly ways. India had not approved of the match and, not approving, had not been happy in her brother-in-law's home. She welcomed the news that Ashley now had a home of his own, so she could remove